Casting Off the Old, Revealing the New

(The first photograph is taken by a drone of the largest cave in the world, the second is artwork by Tomasz Alen Kopera)

I am feeling a relief one hour after this New Moon/Solar Eclipse. Yet, it isn't the totality of my experience. As the sun enters Aries later today, marking the start of Spring and for some the start of the Solar Year, I am not artificially expecting myself to enter everything new as if nothing has occurred before. I am starting Spring in the dark magic of the soil, connected to all of the ancient layers and watery realms that live beneath it.

And, I am feeling the new. It's just that after all I've been through-- and we've been through astrologically speaking since June of 2009, through 2012 and until Today-- the way the new shows up for me is not in the form of a child-like wonder. I can't ignore that we've all just been initiated into a new 2,150 year cycle. The depth of spiritual experiences, growing maturity and access to truth has utterly shaped my existence, and in some small way the whole.

Waking up to the new is not necessarily free of a past. or stories. or experiences. or lessons. For me, it is simply rich with an ever deepening presence and awareness of how they are working, the love that is growing from them, the training they offer my consciousness and a deeper connection to the primal experience of being a co-creator of this multidimensional plural-verse. Waking up to the new is embracing that my key task in this life is to fully inhabit my vessel and root into the earth while respecting that it is possible for you to do the same without our differences tearing our hearts apart in illusion.

I am not experiencing this as a time of innocence. However, my only hope is that I stay connected to my innocence while I come into the budding wisdom that lives inside of me. Discrimination, confrontation, integration and reflection must be woven with that innocence so that I can come down from the vision of how the world can be and directly experience it; from there, choose what I really want with thought and action.

This New Moon is in the last degree of Pisces, and the most multidimensional frequency. For the most part, it is beyond human realms of understanding. To talk about it, means we're missing it altogether, but it doesn't really matter because we're already inside of it. This is an example of the stories of separation we're casting off-- the idea that some are getting it and some aren't, and those that 'have it' must help those that don't, or scurry around protecting their 'havingness' as if some external source has the power to take it away.

As we cast off the corpse of the dying world, it is much like being with someone as they are dying and transitioning to the new. It can be filled with an enriched duality. It doesn't invite, but demands us to be with life on its terms, rather than our own. It pushes us like the contractions of a mother's womb loving us into the new, united with the forces of nature. And, while a clear mind is a treasure in these moments, fear, projections and illusions can be heightened in the process of letting go and shaking off the old, dead skin. Sometimes what one being cannot see for themselves the community around them must. Presence serves. The small acts of caring become the evolutionary fuel for the new.

The final Pluto Square Uranus event of seven that took place Monday March 16 is far more powerful and rare than a new moon, solar eclipse and first day of Spring. My experience of these seven squares, is that they work like this:

All the shit I thought I had already dealt with and composted comes flooding into the space in the form of projections, conflict, frustration and repetitive feelings and reactions. It intensifies. And, even if I am tracking closely with it, watching the process as it unfolds, I get hooked. It sucks. I know better, but my ability to show up- present and awake- is still strengthening like a muscle or movement that my body knows how to do but I am struggling to do it in this circumstance.

During the first few squares, I found myself repeating "I can't do this" to myself a lot, wanting to change everything on the outside so that I could be at peace on the inside. However, by the fifth square last April, I began to feel more at ease, reminding myself that this was a 70/30 game, with 70% of the work needing to be done on the inside-- like owning my projections and their subsequent distortions- and about 30% making external shifts-- like getting Mark to do his own laundry and split kitchen duties with me 50/50.

The gift I find following the squares is that life is ultimately so much easier and so much more fluid than the weeks, sometimes months surrounding the square. I find that I am not insane and stuck. I am not being punished for some past life where I really screwed up. My family is not here to crush me and oppress me as a woman. My obsession with vaccines passes and the truth that I discovered through that obsession remains.

And, the fresh -- and-- deep energy of this New Moon/Solar Eclipse and the start of Spring is WELCOMED. As it all comes up, there's nothing better than a fresh breeze to move it through.

Untwisting The Twist

(artwork by Deborah Koff-Chapin)

In the darkness before dawn, letting go feels quite easy. Yet, after the sun rises, even my thought-forms seem real, like a dish to be washed or the sweet sap in a maple. I am not my thoughts. But, the one that yanked me from my sleep to this clicking keyboard went like this:

The one in me that has experienced trauma clings to power but craves love. I have spent almost two decades talking about how much I love, love, rarely noticing my unconscious preoccupation with power.

A decade ago, I stripped myself of everything to serve a spiritual calling. I offered up my marriage, my possessions, my social status, even my metaphorical baby at the time, a nonprofit organization cultivating seeds of consciousness and feminine structures to midwife a new civilization. I moved on the edge of truth like a dancer, surrendering to higher service with fearless innocence and selfless freedom. The feeling was one of life or death; nourish your spirit through this stripping or start to die slowly, knowing you saw the entrance to the path but walked by thinking you'd return 'one day'.

During these years, I cultivated a strong, lasting relationship to faith, love and devotion. I also fed my unconscious relationship to power. Just how deep this lust for power penetrated my being has just recently been revealed to me with my father's passing. The experience I had at his death and through the many dreams that followed demanded me to claim myself as a sovereign being and inhabit any and all vacancies that unconsciously make space for destructive forces. The simple truth that arrived: it's time to meet the most vulnerable, powerless, broken parts of myself in order to untwist the twists of abuse, alcoholism, rape, ignorance and murder, even if I must release all that I believe to be true in the process.

I often marvel at my ability to be a contortionist, trying to fit into some version of myself that has yet to come true, or never will be true rather than resting in the perfection of who I am. Now, as I enter my 40's the untwisting of my contortions appears to be less dramatic. This time, it seems I just need to let the love in deep, and, be grateful for every choice I've made to cultivate it. And, to forgive myself for the harm I've done trying to deny, escape or numb my pain in order to survive, or protect my pride.

As I evolve, the question to ask myself is not only: How does this choice grow my love?
But, how does this choice offer love to the parts of me that need it most?

This feels like the ultimate in responsibility and fulfillment.

Just Write.

In an interview my husband did with Ray Bradbury decades ago, Mark asked him: "What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a writer?"
Ray Bradbury's answer: "Write. If you want to be a writer, write every day."

I have always loved writing. But, first, I wanted to be a pilot like my step-dad. Then, I took a career test in High School. It determined I'd make a better clown, priest or therapist. I studied Journalism, and I've never stopped writing.

This year, I turn 42. I am not so interested in being 'something'. Yet, I still love to play with form, identity, words and perspective. And, I love to write. When I meditate, the words flood in. Rather than being at odds with this. I am going to meditate for less time, and write more.

I haven't posted to this blog in almost five years! I thought I was going to be ashamed of what I had written. I wasn't. And, this is something that 'i' can truly celebrate. It's hard to see clearly or love intimately from on top of a mountain; especially a mountain of shame.

Being Revealed

(artwork by Adam Doyle)

While facilitating a circle today, I had the experience of speaking truth and literally getting up and walking out of the room. I felt so uncomfortable being seen as a source of truth, that I couldn't be still at a precious moment in time when stillness was necessary.

In the past, I've always facilitated with a partner or teacher, something to hide behind or hold me in a moment like this. This time, I was alone sourcing something beyond myself and feeling so utterly naked I ran away.

And, in that running was perfection. I saw myself. I saw myself running, running from the truth and seeing myself revealed. Shame passed and I found myself laughing at how beautiful it is to discover what I run from.

I am afraid that I am dark and even more afraid that I am light. In my willingness to confront my darkness, I find the courage necessary to express my light. In my expressing my light, I am free.

And, still I must learn to wait. I long for truth to part my lips and surf the moment without a single quiver. No disturbance or interruption of thought. Just straight truth escaping from my heart and penetrating into another.

Transformation Is Not Liberation

Or, is it?
(artwork by Dan Rosenhagen)

Housework has become a mecca for epiphanies. Yesterday, folding clothes and putting them away, I wondered, have I spent years confusing transformation for liberation? Is the awareness of what fuels my growth more important than growth itself?

My desire to "be a better person" has created so much self-sabotage, painful distortions and creative contortions. At the time, I thought all of this flexibility and self-denial was making me more spiritual. Now, looking back, only a small percentage of what I did actually helped liberate me.

As I finished putting my clothes away, I felt the physical exhaustion from the false ways I've contorted and distorted myself in the name of transformation. How do I stay connected to my authentic desire for freedom? How do I resist the social pressures that taps into my desire to be a better human being but don't have any consciousness of my unique being and what it needs to free itself?

No matter how much skin-deep transformation I might have done in the past, I am humbled by the potency of my desire to be free.